


Receive My Last Breath (Lest I Pass Away)

by DeductionIsKey



Category: Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 - Malloy, Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Genre: Angst, Attempted Suicide, Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Honestly Proud Of This, Self-Insert, Yes It’s Canon Compliant I’m An Artist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 04:28:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17318087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeductionIsKey/pseuds/DeductionIsKey
Summary: Natasha closed her eyes.“Natasha? Natasha, wake up! Natasha!” It was so very dark.She didn’t want to die.(Natasha attempts suicide via arsenic poisoning, and gets cured by a doctor in the night.What if an American woman from 2019 was that doctor?)(Done classfully. Canon Compliant.)





	Receive My Last Breath (Lest I Pass Away)

**Author's Note:**

> I actually wrote this as a literature assignment, but loved it so much I couldn’t help but share it! Enjoy! :D

Countess Natalya Ilyinishna Rostov was unbearably cold and wished nothing more than to die.

She fumbled with the flap of the arsenic bottle with shaking hands, wet with sweat and wracked with fear. Alone was she in that house, with only Marya Dmitryevna’s hateful eyes glaring at her -  she was not a hussy, she was not! The adrenaline that had possessed her merely hours before had trickled down into blunt denial, yet the tears came not. Sonya, her dearest friend, had she really sent her away? Andrei, her love, her betrothed, had she really rejected him with such cruel abandon?

Marya Dmitryevna seemed to believe so, as Natasha had listened to such exclamations, laced with once was fondness and endearment, now lined only with disgust and outrage. Natasha had seen the look on Sonya’s face as she had tearfully lifted her aching head amongst the roaring of Marya. Sonya had been the one to betray her to Marya, and the words she had flung angrily back at her dear friend stung her now as she sat on the cold drawing room’s floor.

The lime water that Marya had left here had gone warm as time passed, and still, Natasha sat there with that white bottle, struggling to find the courage to open it, tried to find some protest for her actions. Yet as time passed, she found only hopelessness greeted her protests, and soon they too were flung by the wayside, until the path she says in front of her was a bleak, trepid one. Prince Bolkonsky would not accept her back, nor should he. She had shamed her family, her honour, and brought only vileness upon her gracious host’s house. She had no future, no love.

She slowly twisted the bottle opened.

-

Her whole body was wracked with nausea as Natasha knocked desperately on Sonya’s bedroom door. She stumbled as her trembling arms reached up in pain to bang once more upon it, and soon lost her footing, coming crashing to the floor. Pain like daggers pierced her skin. She closed her eyes.

“Natasha? Natasha, wake up! Natasha!” It was so very dark. 

She didn’t want to die.

 -

Natasha woke to bitter smells and clean linens.

Blearily, she opened her eyes - and how it hurt to do so. Her whole body seemed to throb, and her hair felt brittle in her hands. The bed she was in was a clean white, and the sight of her familiar bedroom served only as a reminder of last night. The sharp pain she felt in that dreadful hallway had seemed to subside, and now all that greeted her was a bruised feeling throughout her entire figure. She deserved it all, she knew. At that moment, all Natasha wanted was to cry, but the exhaustion that coated her seemed to apply to her eyes as well, for though she sobbed, the tears did not come.

“What is it, my angel; are you ill?” It was her father, standing in the entrance of her room. He had been at his estates in the environs, and she was not surprised to see him now. Her father loved her dearly, and she could easily read the concern in his face. She must be a wreck, her eyes bloodshot and her hair sticking every which way. Still, the care her father was showing her seemed bitterly fake, for she knew once he heard about her scandal that care would dissolve.

“Yes, I am ill.” She answered, though the words seemed emotionless.

She was ill.

-

“Who saved me?” She asked later, when Sonya came to her, her face stressed with worry and her hands barely fidgeting. Natasha’s face was blank as she hugged her friend, and the pastries that her friend had had the servants fetch tasted horrid in her mouth.

“An unknown woman,” Sonya began, and started at the suddenness of Natasha’s grasp of her arm, whose face was alight with suspicion and fear. “She shan’t talk,” Sonya assured her, and Natasha found herself calmed to the slightest degree, yet her eyes still were alight with desperation. Sonya, spurred by the sudden emotion in her friend’s face, of which she had not seen the like in days, continued.

“She came at night, bare minutes after I found you,” and here Sonya’s voice lowered for dramatic effect, and Natasha felt herself being pulled deep into the tale. “Garbed with clothes, tight fitting and foreign. The accent this woman possessed seemed most strange to me, and in the hysteria, the footman almost denied her entrance at once. And shall you blame him, for all his unkindness? It was past midnight, and the winds, so cold and strong! The only way for such a journey to be made must have been supernatural means.” Here, Sonya seemed to shudder, and Natasha hung onto her every word. It did not seem as though Sonya was telling her of her own curing, but rather thrilling her with an elaborate fiction. The thought brought her only relief. 

“Of course, Marya Dmitryevna was appalled at first and did dearly wish to prevent a scandal, but with your wellbeing in such danger, she invited the stranger in temporarily. The servants had just seated her in the drawing room when I came in to inform Marya of your state.” Sonya’s face took on a sombre look at this declaration, but she shouldered on with her tale. “Immediately, Marya Dmitryevna commanded me to call for a doctor, and to my deep shock-!” Here, she broke off with a flustered breath and leaned into Natasha as though professing some great secret. “The woman proclaimed she herself was learned in the art!”

Natasha reeled back with a scandalized gasp at this, and Sonya nodded at her reaction. “So thought I! I confess I was not able to contain my gasp as well, though strangely, the woman seemed only to be amused by my reaction!” Sonya leaned back out again, yet her tone did not change in the slightest, still laced with scandalized shock. “I think it was only desperation that allowed Marya to let her view you. She leaned into your figure, smelling your breath, I believe.” Sonya’s nose crinkled slightly. “And then withdrew a strange needle as well as a bottle of the strangest liquid. She called it... _vitamin Ee_ ?” The foreign word curled hesitantly out of Sonya’s lips. “Of course, Marya protested at you being _punctured_ so brutally, but the woman made quite a compelling case, it seemed.” With the tale done, Sonya settled into her calm self once more and waited for the question she knew would soon burst from Natasha’s lips.

“And then I recovered?” It was a soft question, breathless as Natasha struggled to wrap her mind around the impossibilities of what Sonya had said. A health puncture? It seemed a miracle. 

Sonya nodded. “And then you recovered.”

Gratitude suddenly surged in Natasha, and she found herself needing to see her miraculous curer. “Is she still here? The woman, I mean.”

This time Sonya answered in a lower voice than before. “Yes, it seems so. Marya Dmitryevna offered her the central guest room, and as far as I know, she’s still here.”  

Nausea and relief rose up in Natasha, and she hugged her friend with desperate sorrow. She was sick with guilt and fever, yet she attempted to speak once more, to apologize for those horrible words she had spoken. “Sonya, Sonya, my friend-”

Sonya held her hand up, her eyes twinkling with joy as she rose off Natasha’s bed. “No words are needed, my cousin. The only recompense I find necessary is the betterment of your condition. Rest, dear Natasha. You shall see your miracle-worker in the morning.”

Natasha could only obey.

-

“-100.9 F. A bit high, but much lower than yesterday. I do believe your friend shall be just fine.” Natasha woke to cold hands pressed against her forehead, and something pressed upon her ear. With a slight jerk of alarm, she beheld a young woman - so very young! - sitting next to her bedside, speaking to a figure outside of her line of sight. The woman turned toward her, and her face, unlined and clear, smiled upon seeing Natasha. “Our patient awakes! I daresay you’ve been through quite an ordeal!” The woman withdrew the strange object she had been holding up against her ear and put it down somewhere next to her bed, perhaps in the mysterious ‘satchel’ Sonya had spoken of. Natasha sat up with a grimace and looked toward Sonya, whose eyes were unabashedly staring with fascination at the stranger. Sonya looked at her as she moved, and Natasha gestured with her eyes at the door, pleading that Sonya would understand. With a slightly reluctant smile, Sonya did, and quietly exited the room once more.

“Privacy is important.” The woman said, and with a blush, Natasha realized that the woman had indeed seen that little exchange. “What seems to be upon your mind, my dear?”

It was not the strange term, nor the endearment that puzzled Natasha. It was the accent with which the woman spoke, and her Russian came out strangely tilted and fast. She was fluent, Natasha could tell, but certainly not a native, nor from a country which Natasha recognized. Britain perhaps?

“I know not what you mean,” Natasha answered. Even with such a puzzle before her, the recent actions of herself ashamed her, and the sentence came out sad and small.

“I believe you do, but perhaps I am not the one you must speak too. There is always hope, Natasha. If you wish to be happy, be.” A strange tilt seemed to come upon the stranger’s mouth with the next words, humour lost on Natasha. “Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved. Blame not love for your troubles, but rather the rashness of a young woman. Live, and learn, Natasha.” A hand on her shoulder and the woman looked deeply at her. A moment in silence, and then, it passed. The woman rose from that chair as Natasha watched her, softly bewildered.

“Goodbye, dear Natasha.” As Natasha looked on, the woman gathered her things and started toward the door. With one last glance, the woman’s eyes softened. “All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.”

And with this, she was gone.

-

The next morning, Natasha rose from her bed and moved over to her vanity silently. With a gentle, still-shaking hand, she brushed the troublesome knots out of her hair. Each knot that came out seemed to brighten her spirits, and she became more and more herself as the time passed.

She dressed, calling Sonya to come and assist her with her hair, and softly they talked of everything and nothing at all. Marya Dmitryevna came to her graces in the afternoon, bringing the news that Anatole had been already wed, and yet Natasha met this declaration with only a sad nod, not allowed it to break her.

A knock upon the door came whilst she and Marya were talking, and she looked up to see Andrei’s friend, Pierre Bezuhov. With a silent breath, she straightened, neither ignoring nor greeting him. With a nod, Marya and Sonya left the room, and she was left alone, with only Pierre sadly gazing upon her. She struggled to not let the tears fall when he confirmed Anatole’s treachery, and Pierre - that kind man - spoke words she knew not she needed.

As Pierre left, Natasha thought back to that strange woman and her mysterious words.

_If you wish to be happy, be._

She found only solace in those words.

Outside, a comet, great and horrible in its majesty, blazed.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos? Comments? They make my day, even if it’s just a word or two! 
> 
> (And if you were wondering, I put three Leo Tolstoy quotes in the text. Find them, and let me know! :D)


End file.
